Compiling a Program of Life Skills Training with Solution-Oriented Approach and Its Effectiveness in Regulating Children's Emotions with Behavioral Problems in Divorced Families

Divorce is one of the phenomena that disturbs not only the mental balance of couples but also that of children, relatives, and friends. Children of divorced families are exposed to psychological and personality disorders and emotional problems. One of the most common problems of children of divorce is a limitation in emotional regulation skills and control of positive and negative emotions. Acquiring life skills with a solution–oriented approach is a psychosocial skill for adaptive behavior. Education enables people to effectively deal with the requirements and challenges of daily life so that their focus turns on issues that are likely to change instead of complex and unchangeable ones. The present study was conducted to develop a life skills training program with a solution–oriented approach and identify its effectiveness in the emotional regulation of children with behavioral problems in divorced families.

The present study was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest and a 1–month follow–up design with a control group. The statistical population comprised all children with behavioral problems aged 12 to 18 years, living in the cities of Tehran Province, Iran, whose parents divorced 1 to 5 years ago. A total of 30 qualified volunteers from the statistical population were included in the study using the available sampling method and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, 15 children in each group. The inclusion criteria were as follows: 1–5 years passed since the parents' divorce, aged 12 to 18 years, the existence of behavioral problems in children, and the consent and cooperation of parents and teenagers to participate in the research. The exclusion criteria included lack of motivation of the participants in answering the questions of the questionnaire, absence of more than three sessions from the training sessions, and being under the same training program. Achenbach Youth Self–Report Scale (YSR) (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) and Emotion Regulation Checklist for Children and Adolescents (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997) were used for gathering data. Teaching life skills with a solution–oriented approach was conducted in ten 1–hour sessions for the experimental group. In the descriptive statistics section, the mean and standard deviation were used. In the inferential statistics section, the data were analyzed by repeated measurement analysis of variance and Bonferroni post hoc test using SPSS version 26 software at a significance level 0.05.

The results showed that the effect of time on the emotional instability variable (p=0.032) and adaptive emotion regulation variable (p=0.004) was significant. The group effect was also significant on the mentioned variables (p<0.001). In both variables of adaptive emotion regulation and emotional instability, the average scores of the experimental group in the posttest stage were significantly different from the pretest stage (p<0.001). In the follow–up phase, the effect of the intervention continued. Regarding the variable of emotional instability (p=0.040) and the variable of adaptive emotion regulation (p<0.001), the changes continued significantly in the follow–up stage compared to the pretest stage.

By acquiring the necessary skills, involving teenagers in collaborative and interactive methods, and learning how to think instead of what to think, the life skills training program with a solution–oriented approach demonstrates a powerful tool for learning emotion regulation skills. Therefore, it is a suitable tool for improving the emotion regulation variable.